Written by:
Kelley Stewart
McConathy
What Is Romanticism?
• Use creative imagination
• Focus on nature
• Importance of myth and
symbolism
• Focus on feelings and intuition
• Freedom and spontaneity
• Simple language
• Personal experience, democracy
and liberty
• Fascination with past
Trends
• Changing political and
social conditions
• Reaction against
Industrial Revolution
• Revolt against
Enlightenment and
literary styles
• Working long hours in
dangerous factories
• Development of modern
cities
Trends
• Interest in chaos and
nature
• Changing religious views
• Rebellion against
authority
• Crime, madness, suicide
Revolt Against Neoclassicism
Neoclassic
Trends
Romantic Trends
• Stressed reason
and judgment
• Stressed
imagination and
emotion
• Valued society
• Valued individuals
• Followed
authority
• Strove for
freedom
• Maintained the
aristocracy
• Represented
common people
• Interested in
science and
technology
• Interested in
supernatural
Art Reconceived
• John Constable: British
landscape artist
• George Walker: English
painter
• Joseph Mallord William
Turner: English
watercolorist
Constable
Turner
Art Plumbs Emotional Depths
• Théodore Géricault:
French painter
• Eugène Delacroix:
French painter
• William Blake: poet,
painter, engraver,
illustrator
Musical Innovations
• Conveys freedom and
individuality
• New ways of producing
musical instruments
• Emotionally charged
music popular
Music Greats
• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Frederic Chopin
• Carl Maria von Weber
Chopin
Von Weber
Beethoven
Philosophers’ Views
• Philosophers valued:
– Art
– The self
– Creativity
– Imagination
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
and Immanuel Kant:
examples of such
philosophers
Rousseau
Philosophers’ Views Widen
• Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe
Von Schelling
Von Goethe
• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
von Schelling
Poets of the Romantic Era
• William Blake
• William
Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor
Coleridge
Blake
Wordsworth
Coleridge
• George Gordon,
Lord Byron
• John Keats
• Percy Bysshe
Shelley
Shelley
Byron
Keats
Thoughts of British Romantic Poets
“…I will not reason and compare: my
business is to create.” William Blake
“ Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.” William
Wordsworth
Blake
“Examine nature accurately, but
write from recollection, and trust
more to the imagination than the
memory.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge
Thoughts of British Romantic Poets
“Those who will not reason, are
bigots, those who cannot, are fools,
and those who dare not, are slaves.”
George Gordon, Lord Byron
“What the imagination seizes as beauty
must be truth.” John Keats
“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden
beauty of the world, and makes
familiar objects be as if they were
not familiar.” Percy Bysshe Shelley
William Blake
1757-1827
• Visions of ghostly and
angelic figures
• Possessed mystic “gift
of vision”
• Born in London
November 28, 1757
• Educated at home by
mother
• Enrolled in drawing
school at age ten
Blake’s Education & Marriage
• Apprenticed to engraver at 14
• Completed apprenticeship at 21
• Journeyman copy engraver for
London publishers
• Admitted to the Royal Academy
of Art’s Schools of Design
• Married Catherine Boucher
Blake Video
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Blake Unappreciated
• Lived in poverty
• Moved to Felpham,
Sussex
• Accused of assault and
sedition
• Final projects included
illustrations and/or
watercolors for others’
writings
Blake’s Death
• Suffered from unknown
sickness
• Experienced stomach
pain and chills
• Died on August 12th, 1827
• Buried in unmarked grave
Blake’s Works
• Songs of Innocence
• Songs of
Experience
• Poetical Sketches
• The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell
“The Lamb” and “The Tyger”
• Most popular poem:
“The Tyger”
– “Did he who made the
Lamb make thee?”
– “What immortal hand
or eye,/Dare frame thy
fearful symmetry”
• Companion poem to
“The Lamb”
– “Little Lamb, who made
thee?/Dost thou know who
made thee?”
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William Wordsworth
1770-1850
• Born in Cockermouth,
Cumberland, England
• Mother died 1778
• Attended St. John’s
College, Cambridge
• Had affair with Annette
Vallon
• “Vaudracour and Julia”
for lover and daughter
Losses and Triumphs
• Married Mary Hutchinson
• Five children
• Lived with sister Dorothy
• Brother John died at sea
• Lost friendship with
Coleridge
• Two children died
• Granted honorary Doctor
of Civil Law degrees
Wordsworth in Despair
• Named Poet Laureate
• Death of third child, Dora
• Stopped writing poetry
• Abandoned Romantic
beliefs
• Died in 1850 at Rydal
Mount
• Buried at St. Oswald’s
Church, Grasmere
Wordsworth’s Works
• Lyrical Ballads “Tintern
Abbey”
– Wordsworth used “real
language of men”
– Definition of poetry: “the
spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings from
emotions recollected in
tranquility”
• An Evening Walk and
Descriptive Sketches
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Works and Themes
• Recurring themes in
Wordsworth’s poetry
• The Prelude
• Poems in Two Volumes
•
The Lake Poets:
Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Southey
Tintern Abbey
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountainsprings
With a soft inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
Samuel Coleridge
1772-1834
• Born October 21, 1772
• Father was a parish vicar
• Sent to London boarding
school
• Not allowed to return
home for holidays
• Attended Jesus College
at University of
Cambridge
• Won Browne Gold Medal
for ode
Coleridge’s Errors
• Left college to join 15th
Light Dragoons
• Reenrolled in college
• Left without degree
• Joined poet Robert
Southey to build a
Pantisocracy
• Married Sarah Fricker
• Unitarian minister
Opium, Travel & Transcendentalism
• Friends with William Wordsworth
• Started taking opium
• Granted annuity of 150 pounds to write
• Traveled to Germany with Wordsworth
• In Germany: Coleridge studied German
and Transcendentalism
Coleridge
• Opium addiction
• Lost friendship with
Wordsworth
• Lived with a apothecary
for care
• Died of heart failure
Coleridge’s Works
• First publication: Poems
on Various Subjects
• Published Lyrical Ballads
• Most famous works
– “The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner”
– “Kubla Khan”
– Biographia Literaria
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck nor breath nor motion:
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
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George Gordon, Lord Byron
1788-1824
• Parents separated
before his birth
• Born in London
• Named George Gordon
Noel Byron
• Born with club foot
• Moved to Aberdeen,
Scotland
• Inherited family title at ten
Byron’s Early Years
• Attended Aberdeen
Grammar School, Harrow,
and Trinity College,
Cambridge
• Kept a pet bear at Trinity
College
• Fell in love with choirboy
John Edleston
• John Edleston died
• Byron wrote a series of
elegies
Byron’s Exploits
• Traveled on
customary Grand
Tour
• Made speech at
House of Lords
• Defended Roman Catholicism
• Bragged about sex with women in Italy
• Rumored incestuous relationship with sister
Byron’s Exploits
• Married Anne Isabella
Milbanke
• Divorced Anne
• Left England forever
• Befriended Percy
Bysshe Shelley
• Created child in affair
• Seduced Italian
Countess Guiccioli
• Gave 4,000 pounds to
refit Greek fleet
Byron’s Death
• Fell ill; remedy of bleeding caused fever
• Greek national hero
• Heart buried under tree
• Westminster Abbey refused body
• Monument in Westminster
Abbey 145 years
post-mortem
Byron’s Works
• “Epigraph to a Dog”
• Byron’s masterpiece:
Don Juan
• “She Walks in Beauty”
• “Darkness”
• Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage
She Walks in Beauty
She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
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John Keats
1795-1821
• Born in London
• Four siblings
• Keats’ father died
• Mother remarried two
months later
• Children sent to live
with grandmother
• Mother died of
tuberculosis
Keats’ Medical Career
• Apprenticed to apothecary/surgeon
• Student at Guy’s Hospital
• Wrote first poem
• Became junior house
surgeon and dresser
• Qualified as apothecary
• Quit medicine
Keats’ Video
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Writing, Relationships & Illness
• Published Poems
• Friend of Percy Bysshe
Shelley
• Brother George left for
America
• Brother Tom died of
consumption
• Fell in love with Fanny
Brawne
• Symptoms of tuberculosis
• Traveled to warmer climate
to recover
Keats’ Death
• Died in Rome at 25
• Buried in Protestant
Cemetery in Rome
• Tombstone reads:
“Here lies one whose
name was writ in water.”
• Fanny Brawne mourning
for years
• Poetic career lasted
3.5 years
Keats’ Works
•
Endymion
•
Hyperion
• “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
• “Ode to the Nightingale”
• “Ode to Autumn”
• “The Eve of St. Agnes”
Ode to the Nightingale
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk;
Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness—
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822
• Born near Horsham in
Sussex, England
• Tutored at home
• Attended Sion House
Academy of Brentford
• Educated at Eton
College and University
College at Oxford
• First publication:
Zastrozzi
Shelley Video
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Shelley’s Exploits
• Published The Necessity
of Atheism
• Eloped with 16-year-old
Harriet Westbrook
• Daughter named Ianthe
• Often left wife and child
• Met Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin
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Shelley’s Complicated Life
• Left pregnant wife for 16year-old Mary
• Traveled to Switzerland
• Claire pregnant with
Byron’s child
• Mary Shelley began
working on Frankenstein
• Shelley took Claire and
daughter to Venice
Losses and Views
• Son and daughter died
• Wrote Adonais upon
Keats’ death
• Wrote essay on radical
political views
• Essay on vegetarianism
• Believed in rights of all
living things
Shelley’s Death
• Drowned during storm at 29
• Possibly assassinated
• Body washed ashore
• Wife kept Shelley’s heart
• Shelley cremated on beach
• Ashes buried in Rome
Shelley’s Works
• “Ozymandias”
• “Ode to the West Wind”
• “The Masque of Anarchy”
• “To a Skylark”
• Prometheus Unbound
“Ozymandias” Video
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Ode to the West Wind
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow.
In Conclusion
• Beyond poetry
• Topics still popular today
• Lasting impact